Gun Regulation Index

An article in the journal Epidemiology defines a "gun regulation index" that quantifies gun regulations and applies that analysis to each US state. You can read the details in the article but the basic idea is that restrictive laws contribute positively to the index while permissive laws contribute negatively. The authors then study the correlation between their index and gun deaths in each state. The figure above is a reproduction of figure 2 in their article.

That indicates that an increase of the gun regulation index by 10 in a state might decrease the number of gun deaths by just over 6 for every 100,000 residents in that state. For a state like North Carolina with a population of just over 10,000,000 people, that would translate to over 600 lives.

It's worth noting, though, that the study is based on data up to 2016 and that gun laws in many places, including North Carolina, are now more permissive.